Daniel (Hope in Hopeless Times)

God Gives (Daniel 1)

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens opens with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” For the book of Daniel, the opening would simply be, “It was the worst of times.” The first verse of Daniel reads, “In the third year of the reign of Jehoakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.” The setting for the book of Daniel is a time of great wickedness such that God has brought the Babylonian Empire in as his instrument of judgment against the people of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah is also preaching to the people at this time. So the book opens in crisis as Babylon invades Judah…